English 364 WI: Non-Fiction Prose—Life Writing and British Expository Prose
Craig Howes
I. Course Description
Great Britain has often claimed pre-eminence in the literary genres of biography,
autobiography, and intellectual and journalistic prose, and London has been the setting for a
remarkable number of the most evocative and critical texts ever written on urban cultural
life. In this Study Abroad version of English 364 WI: Non-fiction Prose, students will be
introduced to these genres, and those of the essay, the interview, and other prose forms that
describe life in London from a range of historical, class, and gender perspectives.
We'll start with Peter Ackroyd's London: A Biography, a great introduction to the
history of the city written by one of its most noted novelists, biographers, and critics. (I will
encourage students to read this very substantial book before we arrive in England.) With
this historical and geographical map in hand, the course will then proceed historically,
starting with the late seventeenth century diaries of Samuel Pepys, whose accounts of
London life during the Plague and the Great Fire are compelling portraits of life in the city
during the Restoration. In the eighteenth century, Dr. Samuel Johnson is certainly a
candidate for the title of England's greatest biographer, greatest subject for a biography, and
most famous citizen of London, and his work especially on Richard Savage offers a wartsand-all account of the city in the mid-1700s. James Boswell in his Life of Samuel Johnson
not only gives us a remarkably detailed portrait of London intellectual life, but his private
journals provide a glimpse into a far wider range of urban experience.
Nineteenth century English autobiographical and expository prose offers some
astounding insights into the capitol city of a country swiftly becoming a world power.
Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of An English Opium Eater, Henry Mayhew's London
Labour and London Poor, and Frederick Engels', The Condition of the Working Classes in
England are classics of prose as cultural critique, while Pierce Egan's Life in London is a
comic and satiric sketch of high life and the underworld.
In the twentieth century an entire intellectual community produced landmark
autobiographical, biographical, and intellectual prose. Leon Edel's Bloomsbury: A House of
Lions will provide an overview of this group of artists and writers, followed by close study
of Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians and Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, and
selections from her letters.
As Reginia Gagnier has noted out in Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation
in Britain 1832-1920, a huge number of women, working class men, and other marginalized
populations in Britain also began finding ways to document their lives. We will draw from
some of these narratives to study modes of autobiography; Juliette Atkinson's Victorian
Biography Reconsidered provides excellent commentary on the general impulse to preserve
usually unrecorded or unacknowledged experience.
Attention to matters of class and social justice also motivate Carolyn Kay Steedman's
autobiography Landscape for a Good Woman, and Alexander Masters's Stuart: A Life
Backwards a remarkable biography/memoir that is also formally innovative. I will also be
providing selections from very recent lifewriting texts, to capture a sense of the cultural and
racial diversity of London today as an international city.
A number of field trips will take us to the locations delineated in the narratives
discussed. London is a city of neighborhoods, and for each century, we will explore its
legacy in civic architecture, but also in the current sense of place, whether in the Strand or
the Theatre district, or the historical East End locations of poverty, or the intellectual life of
Bloomsbury, or even the contemporary areas of urban sprawl and working class habitation.
And as they read first- and third-person accounts of London and British life, the
students will also be contributing to this literature by keeping their own London Journal,
shared periodically with the instructor, that records their own wanderings and observations
about the city that will be their residence for several months.
II. Student Learning Outcomes—Study Abroad Program and English Department
English 364 WI: Non-Fiction Prose—Life Writing and British Expository Prose is
designed to achieve the following Study Abroad Program and SAC Course Student
Learning Outcomes, as well as those found in the Department of English Student Learning
Outcomes Statement. In each case, the SLO's link to a course specifically designed for
London will be explained.
A. SAC Program and Course Student Learning Outcomes
Since the Program and the Course SLOs are so integrated in their emphasis on
knowledge, understanding, analysis, and respect for different national and regional cultures
and disparate viewpoints, I have supplied course specific information that nevertheless
addresses the larger programmatic concerns.
1. Students will demonstrate awareness of their own cultural values and biases and how
these impact their ability to work with others.
All of the texts and the field trips will direct the students toward situating the attitudes
and ideologies of the historical periods and the class positions of the writers studied.
London has always been a highly diverse environment, with huge disparities in class and
opportunity. The London Journal assignment and the chronological range of the readings
will allow the students to historicize and to analyze the often highly personal, yet
culturally representative, nature of reading and writing about lives in London.
2. Students will demonstrate knowledge of diversity with a focus on the population or
topic of interest in the specific Study Abroad program.
Life writing and non-fiction prose more generally are the genres of history and cultural
preservation. Both the primary and secondary readings offer insight into very different
backgrounds that nevertheless have made up the shared experience of being Londoners.
3. Students will demonstrate an increased capacity to analyze issues with appreciation
for disparate viewpoints.
Since life writing has historically made possible registering disparity even within dominant,
or even imperial societies, the students will gain a very strong sense of how people for
hundreds of years have talked back, and insisted on a multiplicity of viewpoints, and also
recognize how different genres—the interview, the report, the letter, the diary—actually
construct different kinds of subjects.
B. English Department Student Learning Outcomes
The English Department general Student Learning Outcomes statement indicates that
"students develop advanced skills as readers, writers, and interpreters of texts across a
variety of genres and rhetorical situations . . . as part of a challenging program in literary
and cultural studies, English language studies, composition and rhetoric, and creative
writing." As a London Study Abroad course, English 462 WI: Studies in Drama will not
directly address the English SLO that students will "recognize Hawai‘i's geographic and
cultural location in the Pacific," although we certainly will draw on the students' experience
as residents of Hawai‘i and the Pacific, and as students at the University of Hawai‘i at
Mānoa, to explore the contrasts and commonalities between actions of social critique and
their targets in British and European theatre, and in historical and contemporary Oceania.
Here are the SLOs from the English department's undergraduate curriculum map that
will govern English 364 WI.
1. Students will use secondary sources in the interpretation of texts
In this course, a number of the primary texts—Ackroyd, Edel, Strachey, Woolf, for
instance—can also serve as secondary texts, providing context for the literary and
journalistic prose produced in the period described. Ganier's and Atkinson's work provides
strong context for life narratives. In London, secondary sources will also include the
National Portrait Gallery, the British Library, the Museum of London, and a host of other
resources.
2. Students will develop skill in reading
The reading in the class will be extensive, and cover a range of historical periods and styles,
including dream narratives (De Quincey), urban history (Ackroyd), primary source
documents (Pepys, Boswell, Woolf), and journalistic and intellectual prose (Mayhew,
Masters).
3. Students will develop skill in writing
Because English 364 is a writing intensive class, there will be a substantial number of
writing assignments—essays, postings, a London journal. All essays will be discussed in
individual conferences with the instructor, followed by detailed revision, insuring that
students will be receiving instruction at all stages of the writing process.
4. Students will develop skill in interpretation of texts
The historical range and class diversity of the readings will strengthen students' abilities to
recognize a substantial number of the rhetorical strategies and levels of style to be found in
English prose. And with understanding of the linguistic markers of class, education, and
literary environment, the students will also become more confident and adept at
understanding what can initially seem alien.
5. Students will become familiar with a wide variety of genres and rhetorical situations
It is hard to imagine a wider variety of genres and rhetorical situations than those
encountered in the field of life writing. Students will be reading letters, diaries, journalism
pieces, historical overviews, memoirs, group biographies, polemical essays, political
exposés, class testimonies, interviews—certainly a wide range of genres.
The following Student Learning Outcomes for Writing Intensive courses will also
shape the course curriculum.
1.
Students will write postings about texts read and the field trips; the essays
will go through extensive revision after mandatory conferences.
2.
Students will keep an ongoing London Journal that will gather together
notes on the reading, observations on London life as a Study Abroad
student, and firsthand accounts of activities in the city.
Course Syllabus for Faculty Resident Directorship, London Program Spring 2017
ENGLISH 364 WI: NON-FICTION PROSE—LIFE IN BRITAIN
Instructor: Craig Howes
3 Credits, 45 contact hours
Pre-requisites: Consent of the Instructor
Texts
Primary Texts
Peter Ackroyd, London: A Biography
Samuel Pepys, From the Diary
Samuel Johnson, The Life of Savage
James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, and The London Journals (Selections)
Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Pierce Egan, Life in London
Henry Mayhew, London Labour and London Poor (Selections)
Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Classes in England (Selections)
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, and selections from Letters and Diaries
Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians
Leon Edel, Bloomsbury: A House of Lions
Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman
Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards
A selection of contemporary narratives, based on recent publications
Critical and Theoretical Texts
Juliette Atkinson, Victorian Biography Reconsidered
Reginia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain 1832-1920
Course Requirements
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
Attendance, Participation, Assignment Reading, Field Trips
An individual "London Journal," comprised of weekly entries about the experience
of the Study Abroad Program, within the context of British life writing prose
Six Postings on the course materials, read by all students, and due every other week
Four five-page papers—with revisions
Mandatory conferences with the instructor for all papers.
A final examination
General Weighting for Grades
Attendance and Participation
Postings (Six)
The London Journal
One Class Presentation
Four short papers, with revisions
Final Examination
15%
18% (Half off if late)
10%
7%
40%
10%
A = 85%
D=50% +
B = 75%
C=60%
F = less than 50%
Because of the nature of the Study Abroad Program, attendance is assumed; if
students miss more than two classes, 2% will be taken off for each absence.
Additional Guidelines
1. This course will essentially be a group directed reading. You will have a substantial
number of texts to read and trips to attend. Please keep up with the reading; you will
receive detailed instructions about what you're responsible for every day.
2. You must complete ALL the assignments to receive a grade in the course. I will also be
using pluses and minus for the individual assignments, and for the concluding grade. I
do not take marks off for late assignments, largely because I've found that students do a
very good job of penalizing themselves. I will not, however, accept an assignment until I
have received the previous assignment, and we have conferenced about it.
7. Postings should be submitted by midnight of the due date. If they are late, you get half
credit, and you still must still complete them.
4. The papers will deal with the assigned texts, integrating the narratives into historical,
geographical, generic context. A number of suggested topics will be provided; students
may also design their own topics. There will be mandatory conferences for all papers.
Revisions turned in within a week of the conference will get the second grade.
5. Especially since I will be working with you closely on your writing, and supervising
revisions, academic honesty is important. Plagiarized materials will result in an automatic
F for any assignment; anything further will result in an F on the course. Just don't.
6. Many of the materials in this class deal with such issues as ethnicity, race, gender, class,
sexual identity, and relationship to land and place. Precisely because these all affect us
personally, and differently, mutual respect and consideration in the classroom is essential
so that we can all have an intellectually safe and unthreatening environment.
Week by Week Syllabus for English 364 WI:
Non-fiction Prose—Life in Britain
There will be at least four mandatory trips to neighborhoods and regions—the City,
Bloomsbury, Westminster, and the South Bank—and visits to major institutions that provide
historical context—the British Library, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery,
and the Museum of London. Optional tours through other areas will be available as well.
This syllabus is based on a fourteen week semester. Since I do not know the number
of classes a week, or the specific days, I will describe what will happen each week.
Week One: Introduction to Course, and to London
Texts: Peter Ackroyd, London: A Biography
As the biographer of William Blake, Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, and Oscar Wilde,
Peter Ackroyd probably knows London as well as any major writer. His "Biography" of the
city will provide us with a map for situating virtually all of the succeeding texts, and with a
historical sense of the city as a living, changing, yet enduring entity.
Week Two: Pepys, Johnson, and the City
Texts: Samuel Pepys, From the Diary, Samuel Johnson, The Life of Savage
No one gives us a better account of life in the City of London during the Restoration
than Samuel Pepys—the theatres, the political intrigues, the Great Plague, and the Great
Fire. His diary is an eye-witness account of an important player in the court, and also a
highly engaging read. Johnson gives us a detailed account of the lives of young writers
trying to survive in the literary center of the English-speaking world—his descriptions of
the London streets, the publishing industry, and his own struggles to survive are riveting.
And of course, as the writer who famously remarked that to be tired of London is to be tired
of life, he also provides some of the most familiar and affectionate writing about his city.
Week Three: Johnson, Boswell, and London
Texts: James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, and The London Journals (Selections)
Boswell provides a number of perspectives on London lives. Most famously, he is
the chronicler of the life of Samuel Johnson, his older friend and mentor, so we will read a
number of sections from his biography that describe Johnson, and often Boswell as well, in
London. But Boswell is also one of the most prolific self-chroniclers in British history, and
his detailed, uncensored accounts of his own activities in London offers an insight into areas
of the city, and into the lives of affluent men who indulge in the pleasure of the metropolis.
Tour of the City and the Strand
Week Four: London at Night, the Adventures of a Man About Town, and an Addict
Texts: Pierce Egan, Life in London, Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
Pierce Egan's lively accounts of London nightlife in the early 1800s gave his readers
access to the entertainments, the pleasures, and the dangers of the City after dark. De
Quincey's account of roaming the streets in poverty presents a far darker, more frightening,
but perhaps more accurate account of what London could be like for a person without
means or hope. Both narratives provide strikingly personal narratives, offered in different
styles, of the urban landscape.
Hand in first installment of London Journal
Week Five: Lives, Politics, and Economics: Life Writing as Social Protest
Texts: Henry Mayhew, London Labour and London Poor (Selections); Frederick Engels,
The Condition of the Working Classes in England (Selections)
Critical Text: Juliette Atkinson, Victorian Biography Reconsidered
Mayhew once said that for the more affluent, the lives of the lowest impoverished
classes of Londoners are actually more mysterious and foreign than tribes and peoples in
distant lands. First appearing in serial form in the Morning Chronicle, Mayhew's huge
collection of interviews and portraits of individuals created a panoramic group biography of
London's most ignored and often desperate citizens. Engels meticulously describes what
industrialization has done to the lives of its workers, suggesting in the process that these
stories collectively present us with a society that is unsustainable.
Hand in First Essay; sign up for conference
Week Six: Bloomsbury—Its Life Writers, and Its Historians
Text: Leon Edel, Bloomsbury: A House of Lions
Edel's engaging group history of what became known as the Bloomsbury group is a
narrative that offers us insight not only into the individuals who made up this group of
writers, artists, and intellectuals, but also into the cultural and aesthetic importance of their
relations, through a series of linked chapters. This book will provide an introduction to a
community, in both geographical and sociological senses.
Tour of Bloomsbury and Surroundings—British Museum
Week Seven: Virginia Woof—Essayist and Life Writer
Texts: Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, and selections from Letters and Diaries
As the daughter of Leslie Stephen, arguably the most influential literary biographer
since Dr. Johnson thanks to his involvement with Dictionary of National Biography,
Virginia Woolf was highly familiar with life writing, and also with the restrictions that
gender and economic dependence imposed upon women and others as well. A Room of
One's Own, her series of lectures on Women and Literature, are also highly evocative of
places in Oxbridge and London. (Her descriptions of the British Library in the British
Museum, and London street life are especially fine.) And her letters and journals offer
remarkable insights into the daily scene in London among the learned classes.
Week Eight: Lytton Strachey—Eminent Victorians and Group Biography
Text: Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians
Strachey is one of the most important theorists of biography, largely because of the
introduction to this collection of four brief lives. We will focus in on his role as smasher of
icons, but in the process, also study the British talent for creating and institutionalizing such
icons. We'll pay special attention to his remarks about the functions of biography.
Tour of National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery, and Westminster
Hand in Second Essay; sign up for conference
Week Nine: Representing Themselves—Working Class Autobiography
Texts: Selections from Working Class Narratives and the Mass Observation Project
Critical Text: Reginia Gagnier, Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain
1832-1920
As Reginia Gagnier has shown, a whole archive of working class writing provided
access to the lives of British individuals in their own words. The Mass Observation Project
of the 1930s also recorded the lives and opinions of those generally ignored, in some of the
first and most important sociological research into self-representation and commemoration
of those who labor. We well look at a number of such narratives, but also examine carefully
the assumptions and methods that governed their collection.
Hand in Second Installment of London Journal
Week Ten: Literacy Narratives—Family and Class
Text: Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman
This account of growing up in a working class environment in the 1950s is a striking
portrait of post-World War II Britain, of the expectations working class girls could
legitimately have, and also of the impact such living conditions had on the relations between
parents and children. Steedman captures both the damaging aspects of poverty, and the
consequences of benign neglect on the part of the more affluent. This text will give students
a very good sense of just how pervasive class assumptions are in Britain, and the impact
they have on self-consciousness and social life.
Week Eleven: Post-Thatcher Britain—Disability, Unemployment, and Narrative Form
Text: Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards
This biography/memoir tells the story of a friendship in the 1980s between a more
privileged writer and social advocate, and Stuart Shorter, an often homeless, mentally
disabled individual with an extensive criminal record. This book brings together a number
of the themes we will have been exploring, but also takes the highly innovative path of
telling the life of Shorter backwards, starting from his violent death, and moving through his
life toward his earliest years. As a result, the layers of criminality, mental illness, poverty,
and abuse peel away, eventually leaving us with a young boy, already in bad circumstances,
but apparently with the potential not to live the life he did.
Tour of Official London—Whitehall, the Government Buildings, the Inns of Court and
the New Court, the Hospitals (St. Barts), and the business center
Hand in Third Essay; sign up for conference
Weeks Twelve Through Fourteen: Today's Lives in London
Texts: A selection of contemporary narratives, drawn from recent memoirs, magazine
profiles, performance pieces, and other lifewriting forms
To insure timeliness, I will be selecting these narratives closer to the residence time. I
have close connections with the Center for Life-Writing Research at King's College
London, as an advisor on their Ego-Media grant, which supports critical studies of
contemporary lives in a variety of electronic media. At least some of our final narratives
will be drawn from online sources; others from contemporary publishing. These texts will
account for the racial and cultural diversity of the current city, due to a century of
immigration.
Week Twelve—Hand in Third Installment of London Journal
Week Thirteen—Hand in Fourth Essay; sign up for conference
Week Fourteen—Final Examination